Can Mayor Prickly ever become Mayor Personable?

May 09, 2014|John Kass

Mayor Rahm Emanuel rides Divvy bike in front of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois building after announcing a new partnership to support Divvy bike share and bicycling programs in Chicago on May 1. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

Is it possible to make Mayor Rahm Emanuel even the teeniest bit likable?

I desperately want to help him, and I know you do too, because one look at the guy and you know he needs help, but he's too full of pride and arrogance and fear of showing even the tiniest weakness to ask us.

So I ask on his behalf: How can we make Mayor Prickly into Mayor Personable?

The way he's been acting lately, the idea of making a likable fellow out of Rahm seems impossible. He's already being compared with former Mayor Jane Byrne, whose combativeness drove the whole city crazy. They have that same style. Absolute fear wrapped in rice-paper toughness.

But I'm not the Dr. Albert Schweitzer/Mahatma Gandhi of Chicago columnists for nothing. I know you feel the love for the mayor as do I. So the other morning, when I ran into a group of cops on the street having coffee, I asked them:

How can we make the mayor likable?

They didn't say a thing. After a few seconds of looking at their shoes, one cop said, "We got nothin'."

Well, I said, maybe the mayor can walk the neighborhoods and say hi to all the kids and give them treats.

"Way too creepy," said one cop. "All the parents would complain."

Another piped up: "How do you make him human? First human, then likable."

But he is human. He's flawed. He's tortured. And trapped inside that Mayor Prickly shell is a good and decent man waiting to come out. I might get him a copy of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" to begin the exorcism.

"He can pay his speeding tickets just like everybody else!" said another cop.

Then another officer piped up.

"I got it!" he shouted. "A dunk tank! Just put a dunk tank outside City Hall. Let him sit up there. Think of the money he'd raise. And we could put it toward our pensions he'll screw us outta."

But he'd never go for it. The man wanted to be seen as ruthless and effective. And with gangs overwhelming some neighborhoods, the ruthlessly effective thing isn't working too well.

I warned him about the deficit in his Likability Bank two years ago. He ignored me and continued behaving in that haughty, brittle way of his, like Captain Queeg ready to snap if he didn't find the stolen strawberries.

Then Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis started mopping the alleys with him, and it was too late.

These days, he's released another persona: Mayor Antoinette.

Emanuel's official city vehicles have received 17 red light camera tickets and three speed camera warnings, according to ABC-7 reporter Ben Bradley, who found that all the tickets were dismissed. The mayor is a big supporter of those demonic revenue/spy cameras, but he wouldn't directly answer a question about whether his own tickets should have been paid.

We all have to pay. But the mayor won't pay? That's an arrogant, let-them-eat-cake moment if I ever saw one.

Emanuel said he had admonished his drivers.

"Let me say this," he told reporters. "As soon as I saw that or heard about it, I said, 'Look, follow the law. Nobody's above the law. Slow down — period — nonstop!'"

Period — nonstop? Nobody knows what that means. When mayors talk gibberish, the city begins to tremble.

Naturally, a likable mayor would motion the City Hall reporters to follow him to the clerk's office. There, he'd whip out a checkbook and make good. He'd pay his tickets and make a show of it and laugh at himself.

But Mayor Prickly can't seem to reach for his inner human, and it makes you wonder whether other secret Rahm personas are soon to be revealed.

The personality disorder issue started with a devastating takedown by Tribune writer Kristen McQueary this week. Then radio reporters began asking about the mayoral psyche.

"Oh, my wife kinda agrees with the 'personality disorder' part," said the mayor, trying to laugh it off and failing.

There are many things he could do to raise his likability.

Walk around the city with me and my friend Old School, no cops, no Divvy bikes. We'd start in the neighborhood of my birth — around 52nd and Peoria.

Or he might just try being straight with reporters. That would be good.

Or we could go for the cop's idea: the dunk tank.

Perhaps there are other fine suggestions that readers might send in to help the poor guy.

Bill the Dude, a famous local sandwich designer, said he likes Rahm fine and the mayor doesn't have to do a thing.

"I like him already," said Bill the Dude. "He needs to keep on doing what he's doing no matter what."

But that doesn't extend to Rahm not paying his traffic tickets.

"He has to follow the same rules and laws that we do," said Dude. "He's not better than the rest of us."

But that's the problem, Dude.

A guy named Nate, taking a break outside a Near North Side pizza place, said he had just the prescription for the mayor.

"Stop being an (deleted, but rhymes with bass and pole)," said Nate, who said he once was a fan of Rahm, but wave after wave of pro-Rahm Divvy bike propaganda sickened him, like an overdose of candied beets.

Jason Collazo, 26, blames the mayor for being priced out of his Logan Square neighborhood by hipsters.

"The cost of living is high. The pothole situation is ridiculous, and the city is falling apart," said Collazo.

But the first thing that mustn't fall apart is the mayor. So let's help him.

And let's help that likable guy inside him come out and say hi to Chicago.